Category Minority Veterans
CALVET’S WEBINARS KEEP INFORMATION FLOWING DESPITE COVID-19 CLOSURES
Over six years ago, CalVet began offering a series of webinars to provide information important to California veterans and their families. While important then, they are even more vital today. Consequently, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit and effectively shut down in-person outreach and veterans events, CalVet already had the experience, technology, and audience to expand […]
CLIENT’S DETERMINATION, DEDICATION TO HER FAMILY DREW AGENT’S RESPECT, ADMIRATION, AND A CALVET HOME LOAN
Nearly two dozen photographs adorn a wall next to Lesa Walker’s desk in CalVet’s Home Loans Division in Sacramento. Each picture is special to Walker, who joined CalVet as an associate property agent in 2014. They are photos of veterans and their families who became clients, but also became her friends, her extended family, her […]
THE BLAST FELT ALL THE WAY TO NEVADA: PORT CHICAGO EXPLOSION KILLED 320 SAILORS IN 1944
“The Shot Heard ‘Round the World” at Concord, Massachusetts in 1775 led to the deaths of eight Americans and increased the already heavy tensions between the colonists and the British as the Revolutionary War approached. Most Americans learned about it in elementary school. Fast-forward to another blast not found in school textbooks. This one happened […]
EL SOLDADO
Those who vandalized the El Soldado statue at the State Capitol on July 4 reflected a lack of understanding as to what it represents. The statue, formally known as the California Mexican-American Veterans Memorial, honors Mexican-American soldiers who fought and died during World War II. “This simple monument was built by mothers, daughters, and families […]
CALVET BOARD MEMBER DUNNING AT THE FOREFRONT OF ENDING “DON’T ASK, DON’T TELL”
Zoe Dunning would love to be able to say that with one stroke of President Barack Obama’s pen he ended her 18-year fight for equality in the United States Military by signing the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” three days before Christmas in 2010. That, however, would be far too simplistic in the world […]
JUNETEENTH CELEBRATIONS GO VIRTUAL FOR 2020
On June 19, 1865 – more than two months after Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox – Union General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas. Why? To tell 250,000 enslaved people that they were now free. Thus, Juneteenth (combining June and the Nineteenth) became the day each year African Americans across the nation celebrate that […]
ASIAN AMERICAN/PACIFIC ISLANDER HERITAGE MONTH: CAMPAIGN TO HONOR CHINESE AMERICAN WORLD WAR II VETS WITH CONGRESSIONAL GOLD MEDAL CONTINUES
During an 18-month stretch of World War II, three brothers of a Chinese American family from Los Angeles all joined the United States Military. Herbert Tom went into the U.S. Army in January 1943, serving in the Army Air Corps’ 9th Air Force in Europe until after the war’s end. The eldest brother, George W. […]
WOMEN VETERANS GETTING HELP FROM A VET WHO KNOWS A THING OR TWO ABOUT MINEFIELDS IN TRANSITION TO CIVILIAN LIFE
For a significant portion of her career in the U.S. Marine Corps, Jodie Grenier collected and used information about enemy threats in order to minimize the danger to her fellow troops in Iraq. That included knowing whether and where minefields and weapon systems existed. “My job, essentially, was to collect information to mitigate threats to […]
IT’S A WRAP: VETERANS GETTING NEW HOMES ON “EXTREME MAKEOVER: HOME EDITION” SHOW AIRING SUNDAY, MARCH 15
A partnership between the California Department of Veterans Affairs Residential Enriched Neighborhood Program (CalVet REN), the city of Palmdale, and Homes 4 Families Veteran Enriched Neighborhoods® that provides homes to military veterans, will be featured at 8 p.m. Sunday in an episode of HGTV Channel’s “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition”. “This is an amazing partnership and […]
PIONEER, TRAILBLAZER: VIRGINIA MAE DAYS WAS ONE OF A KIND AS CALVET DIRECTOR
NOTE: As we honor women veterans during Women’s History Month, CalVet remembers one of its own. The late Virginia Mae Days served as CalVet’s director from 1975-81, retiring more than a decade before CalVet became a cabinet level department headed by a secretary. Her story, published on CalVet Connect last fall, bears repeating. In a […]
